The False Faces | Page 8

once kindled into consuming aspiration toward the right; the Lone Wolf prowled again to-day and would henceforth forevermore, the beast of prey callous to every human emotion, animated by one deadly purpose, existing but to destroy and be in turn destroyed....
Two decks below, about amidships, a cargo port was thrust open to the night. A thick, broad beam of light leaped out, buffeting the murk, striking evanescent glimmers from the rocking facets of the waters. Deckhands busied themselves rigging out an accommodation ladder. A tender of little tonnage panted nervously up out of nowhere and was made fast alongside. The light raked its upper deck, picking out in passing a group of men in uniforms. Fugitively something resembling a petticoat snapped in the wind. Then several persons moved toward the accommodation ladder, climbed it, disappeared through the cargo port. The wearer of the petticoat did not accompany them.
Lanyard noted these matters subconsciously, for the time altogether preoccupied, casting forward his thoughts along those dim trails his feet must tread who followed his dark star....
Ten minutes later a deck-steward found him, and paused, touching his cap.
"Beg pardon, sir, but all passingers is requested to report immedately in the music room."
Indifferently Lanyard thanked the man and went below, to find the music room tenanted by a full muster of his fellow passengers, all more or less indignantly waiting to be cross-examined by the party of port officials from the tender--the ship's purser standing by together with the second and third officers and a number of stewards.
Resentment was not unwarranted: already, before being suffered to take up quarters on board the _Assyrian_, each passenger had submitted to a most comprehensive survey of his credentials, his mental, moral, and social status, his past record, present affairs, and future purposes. A formality to be expected by all such as travel in war time, it had been rigid but mild in contrast with this eleventh-hour inquisition--a proceeding so drastic and exhaustive that the only plausible inference was official determination to find excuse for ordering somebody ashore in irons. Nothing was overlooked: once passports and other proofs of identity had been scrutinized, each passenger was conducted to his stateroom and his person and luggage subjected to painstaking search. None escaped; on the other hand, not one was found guilty of flagitious peculiarity. In the upshot the inquisitors, baffled and betraying every symptom of disappointment, were fain to give over and return to their tender.
By this time Lanyard, one of the last to be grilled and passed, found himself as little inclined for sleep as the most timorous soul on board. Selecting an American novel from the ship's library, he repaired to the smoking room, where, established in a corner apart, he became an involuntary and, at first, a largely inattentive, eavesdropper upon an animated debate involving some eight or ten gentlemen at a table in the middle of the saloon--its subject, the recent visitation.
Measures so extraordinary were generally held to indicate an incentive more extraordinary still.
"You can't get away from it," he heard Crane declare: "there's some sort of funny business going on, or liable to go on, aboard this ship. She wasn't held up for a solid week out of pure cussedness. Neither did they come aboard to-night to give us another once-over through sheer voluptuousness. There's a reason."
"And what," a satiric English voice enquired, "do you assume that reason to be?"
"Search me. 'Sfar's I'm concerned the processes of the British Intelligence Office are a long sight past finding out."
"It is simple enough," one of Crane's compatriots suggested: "the Assyrian is suspected of entertaining a devil unawares."
"Monsieur means--?" the Swiss enquired.
"I mean, the authorities may have been led to believe some one of us a questionable character."
"German spy?"
"Possibly."
"Or an English traitor?"
"Impossible," asserted another Briton heavily. "There is to-day no such thing in England. Two years ago the supposition might have been plausible. But that breed has long since been stamped out--in England."
"Another guess," Crane cut in: "they've taken considerable trouble to clear the track for us. Maybe it occurred to somebody at the last moment to make sure none of us was likely to pull off an inside job."
"'Inside job?'" Dressler pleaded.
"Planting bombs in the coal bunkers--things like that--anything to crab our getting through the barred zone in spite of mines and U-boats."
"Any such attempt would mean almost certain death!"
"What of it? It's been tried before--and got away with. You've got to hand it to Fritz, he'll risk hell-for-breakfast cheerful any time he gets it in his bean he's serving Gott und Vaterland."
"Granted," said the Englishman. "But I fancy such an one would find it far from easy to secure passage upon this or any other vessel."
"How so? You may have haltered all your traitors, but there's still a-plenty German spies living in England. Even you